This closing session examines how our understanding of networked media may still benefit from materialist analyses of media theory, applying the insights of such figures as Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan to the ecologies of social cybernetics of today. The session aims to refresh the analysis of many of the themes discussed at the conference of transmediale 2018: it asks how one can confront the contemporary crisis of institutions and democracy along with the return of the far right and the suppression of social movements. Whose agenda gets to be paradigmatic, and what are the potentials and limits of networked computation?

The session is presented in partnership with the project Feedback #2: Marshall McLuhan & the Arts, curated by Baruch Gottlieb with Marie-José Sondeijker. After its first iteration at West den Haag, this second edition is now produced at EIGEN+ART Lab, the Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Embassy of Canada in Berlin, and the Humboldt University Institute of Musicology and Media Studies within the framework of the festival’s annual transmediale Marshall McLuhan projects, supported by the Embassy of Canada in Berlin.